Workshop Series

There are plenty of arguments for why you should build your own cafe racer rather than having it built by a professional workshop. The biggest reason is, of course, the cost. Unfortunately, there are also plenty of reasons why people don’t do it themselves. Lacking the skill to do it is perhaps the…

Anyone who works on motorcycles knows the importance of a good stand. Raising your motorcycle up off the floor gives you easy access to hard to reach places along with making the whole process much easier on your body. Small lifts and race stands do a great job, but if you’re looking…

Tom John, the man behind Purpose Built Moto, has 13 years of electrical contracting work up his sleeves. This is evidenced by the bulletproof electrical systems he installs on his own custom bike builds. As part of my ongoing ‘Building a Cafe Racer’ series, I invited Tom to contribute a story about the…

Our workshop series continues this week with an interview from ‘Cafe Racer Kits’ in the United Kingdom. Ian Saxcoburg is a mechanical draughtsman who ran his own engineering businesses prior to starting the Cafe Racer Kits business. Along with his wife Tracey, they produce a range of cafe styled “kit bikes”. The…

A couple of weeks ago I spent a few days with Matt at his Krank Engineering workshop. Matt had agreed to help me fit a set of “universal” Tarozzi rearset footpegs. This was a stage of my cafe racer build that I’ve been meaning to do for years so it was a…

In this third and final instalment on Blacktrack Motors BT02 Triumph ‘Thruxman’, we learn about the final build stage. Sacha Lakic explains the rebuild process and the all-important safety shakedown. Sacha also shares some insights into the direction he is heading with his Blacktrack brand and what we can expect to see from…

When I set out to build my first cafe racer 12 years ago I had always planned for it to be naked. In my eyes, this was the traditional cafe setup and my goal was to create a bike that would look right at home outside the Ace Cafe in the 1950s.…

I don’t know about you, but I often wonder how brands approach designing and manufacturing protective motorcycle apparel. It’s one thing to make a good looking garment, but to make something that can protect its wearer in an accident is something totally different. Of all the gear we wear it’s our helmets…

In part 2 of our ‘Building a Cafe Racer’ series with Blacktrack motorcycles, we discuss the build of their Norton Manx inspired BT02 Thruxman. With a design concept set in stone Sacha Lakic and his team begin translating the design into functional components to fit to their Triumph Thruxton R donor bike. Here…

Turning your passion into a business is a dream many of us share. A few years ago, when trawling the internet for W650 parts, I stumbled across the Omega Racer store. Since then I’ve featured Omega Racer owner Markus Pintzinger’s custom SR400 here on the site and also installed one of his…

It’s fair to say that a hell of a lot of work goes into the custom motorcycles I feature. So much in fact that it can’t all be covered in a single story. From sourcing the donor bike to designing and fabricating individual parts and right through to the final test ride,…

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Est. 2006 Return of the Cafe Racers is the world's premier cafe racer focused website. We publish regular features on custom motorcycle builds, riding gear reviews, how to guides and event coverage from around the globe. If you're a fan of cafe racer motorcycles and style then you've come to the right place!